Suspension packaging is a form of packaging in which an object to be packaged, usually a fragile one, is suspended within a container, typically using some sort of flexible, resilient material, and maintained out of contact with the rigid portions of the overall container. Because the material is flexible and resilient and the object is out of contact with the rigid portions of the container, the object is thereby protected to some greater or lesser degree from physical shock.
One useful form of suspension packaging is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,743 issued to Louis H. Ridgeway which describes a useful and straightforward system for packaging fragile objects, particularly in solid rectangular containers such as a conventional corrugated board ("cardboard") box. In the '743 patent, the suspension package is formed by two sheets of plastic film material in face-to-face relationship. The sheets are in turn attached to frames which, because they have flaps attached to them, will when placed within a desired sized box, be spaced to fit and hold the object between the plastic sheets. The resulting packages have a number of advantages. First, because they can be formed of corrugated board and relatively inexpensive plastic sheet material, they offer a low cost packaging alternative. Additionally, the frames can be formed in planar fashion and cut as a "blank" and shipped to packaging customers and then stored in that form for assembly by the packager as desired.
As illustrated in the Ridgeway '743 patent, a suspension package attempts to hold an object securely by using the tension that the resilient plastic sheets apply to the object as they are stretched out of a planar orientation by the object placed between them. The extent to which the object forces the sheets out of a planar orientation is sometimes referred to as the "pitch" or the "deflection" of the plastic film. As might be expected, under many circumstances, the greater the pitch, the greater the holding force applied to the packaged object.
The dimensions of thinner objects, however, tend to create less pitch in a suspension package of the type illustrated in the Ridgeway '743 patent. This lack of pitch is compounded by the fact that the frames, and thus the plastic sheets, necessarily abut one another in a face-to-face relationship in a typical suspension package. As a result, such thinner objects, when packaged in a suspension package, have a greater tendency to slip when a sudden force is applied to the container (i.e., when dropped) than do objects that force the plastic film material into a greater pitch.
Nevertheless, the other advantages of suspension packaging are such that obtaining a method of using it with objects that develop less pitch remains a desired packaging goal.